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Splendid Curiosities
The Sad Geranium
There is of late brought into this kingdome, and to our knowledge, by the industry of Mr John Tradescant, another more rare and no less beautiful than any of the former; and he had it by the name of Geranium Indicum noctu odoratum: this hath not as yet beene written of by any that I know; therefore I will give you the description therof but cannot as yet give you the figure, because I omitted the taking therof the last yeare and it is not as yet come to its perfection.1
The plant being described is then said to have tansy-like divided leaves and tufts of yellow flowers with a black-purple spot in the middle, âas if it were paintedâ, and is named the Sweet or Painted Craneâs-bill. Such was the earliest pelargonium to be identified in Britain. It was a strange plant, quite unlike any modern pelargonium, but although it could be said to be a distant cousin of many other pelargonium species, it is unlikely to be an important ancestor of modern hybrids, although some influence cannot be ruled out. Yellow-flowered and night-scented, it disappears below ground for a large part of the year. However, it has a curious charm, and its story must be told because it always appears at the beginning of accounts of the history of pelargoniums and needs to be put into context. It is now called Pelargonium triste, but in the tradition of botanists before the time of Linnaeus it had several earlier names.
The plant was seen in the garden of John Tradescant (c. 1570â1638) in Lambeth, south London, in 1632, and was described in the 1633 edition of John Gerardâs Herball. A herbal was a reference book for herbalists and apothecaries, who in the seventeenth century performed many of the functions of modern-day doctors and pharmacists. John Gerard (1545â1612) had been gardener to Lord Burghley and also had his own garden in Holborn, London. Gerardâs Herball was published in 1597 and claimed to list all the plants known in Britain at the time. By 1630 it was out of date, particularly as many of the illustrations were already old when they were first used. Gerard had died in 1612 and the revision was entrusted to Thomas Johnson (c. 1600â44), an apothecary practising at Snow Hill, London. He had already made detailed studies of plants in Kent and on Hampstead Heath, and was an enterprising businessman who attracted people to his shop with curiosities, such as exhibiting the first bananas to be seen in Britain. The bananas had come from Bermuda and stayed in his shop for two months before they were eaten.2
P. triste
(The sad or dull pelargonium, after the colour of its foliage)
Pelargonium triste from Jacques Cornutâs Canadensensium plantarum, Historia, of 1635. (RHS Lindley Library)
A tuberous-rooted, night-scented, feathery-leaved plant with flowers of yellow, green or black. Its foliage periodically dies down and it has not been widely used for hybridising. Its interest lies in its being the first pelargonium to be recorded as growing in Britain, in 1632.
4. John Tradescantâs house in Lambeth, the site of the first pelargonium recorded as being grown in Britain. (Print from a drawing by John Thomas Smith (1766â1833)/Museum of Garden History)
Johnson was required to produce the new edition of the Herball in one year, which was extraordinary considering its size. The work he did can be seen because the amendments and additions are marked in his edition to distinguish them from the original entries. Johnson was about 30 years old and his work would have guaranteed him a good future as both a herbalist and a writer, but he was wounded during the English Civil War in 1643, fighting for the Royalists at Basing House in Hampshire, and later died of fever brought on by the injury.
Johnson had visited John Tradescant at his house, The Ark, to review his new plant acquisitions for the book. In 1632 Tradescant was in his fifties and had a reputation as a plant collector, as well as being gardener to Charles I. His connections with the royal family gave him the opportunity to travel, first to Russia and then to north Africa, and he brought back new plants to study and grow. He had good business relations with many plant collectors and nurserymen in France, Holland and Germany. His son, also called John (1608â62), carried on his work as royal gardener and made a speciality of collecting plants from America, which he visited three times. The Ark was so named because it contained many curiosities as well as plants, and both house and garden were often open to the public for viewing. The whole collection later became the basis of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
The pelargonium appeared in the Herball at the end of the section on geraniums, or cranesbills as they were commonly known, because, in Johnsonâs words, âThe seed [was] set together like the head and bil of a bird; whereupon it was called Cranes-bill, or Storkes-bill.â3 Johnsonâs description of the plant as âsweetâ, meaning sweet-scented, accords with the name Tradescant knew it by, noctu odoratum, meaning ânight-scentedâ, but the anomaly is in the description of the plant as Indian. Tradescant knew it as Indian because he believed it had come from India, although Johnson does not mention this. We now know, of course, that it came from South Africa, but anything coming from India in the seventeenth century would come via South Africa, as the only sea route was round the Cape of Good Hope, and the only reason to sail round the Cape in those days was to go to India or what was known as the East Indies. Therefore it was logical to suppose that a plant received from an East Indiaman (as ships on this route were called) had come from India. What confused later writers were the words, âbrought into this kingdome . . . by the industry of Mr John Tradescantâ. Shirley Hibberd (1825â90), the Victorian garden writer, speaking to the Royal Horticultural Society in 1880,4 fantasised about Tradescantâs plant that:
It was in all probability among the treasures acquired in his voyage to Barbary, in the fleet sent out against the Algerines in 1620. . . . As the Cape was discovered in 1497, the plant had 123 years to complete the journey to the Mediterranean, and no doubt had the help of Portuguese traders in so doing.5
This is quite an extraordinary leap of ideas. He is saying that the plant had somehow found its way from the Cape, via Portuguese traders, to the Algerian coast, whereupon Tradescant spotted it and snapped it up, carefully bringing it home and keeping it for twelve years before it was recorded as growing in his garden. Even if all that were true, why would it be described as Indian? It is an absurd story, but we must allow for the fact that at the time no one else had given a better explanation.
The nature of this curious plant is what allowed it to survive the voyage from the Cape to Europe in the days before Wardian cases,6 and may also explain why Johnson could not âgive the figureâ when he saw it. Pelargonium triste is a geophyte,7 which means it spends a large part of its life dormant as an underground tuber, only producing leaves and flowers when the conditions are suitable. In its dormant form it looks dried up and dead, and would be easy to transport on a sea voyage. Possibly, although Johnson saw it on his first visit and could describe it, it was not available for drawing on his second as it was in its dormant phase. Who knows why this plant was taken on to the ship at the Cape? Perhaps it was sold to sailors as a curiosity, or perhaps it was included by mistake with vegetables or herbs.
The true explanation of how Tradescant acquired the plant appeared after Shirley Hibberdâs time.8 Tradescant kept records of his plants, showing when and how he had acquired them, in his copy of John Parkinsonâs book, Paradisi in Sole, published in 1629. The name of the book is a pun on the authorâs name, as it translates from the Latin as âpark-in-sunâ. It is the first book to describe plants for their decorative value, rather than as herbs. Tradescant had used the blank pages at the end to write down records of his new plants. At the end of a list of six geraniums he put, âReseved in the yeare 1631 from Mr Rene Morin . . . Geranium noctu odoratuâ. Johnson had gone on in his description to say, âI did see it floure about the end of July, 1632, being the first time that it floured with the owner therof.â So the story fits together, and nothing more mysterious had happened than that Tradescant had bought the plant from Morin and had kept it about a year. He did not, however, record that the plant had come from India, although Morin himself says so elsewhere.
RenĂ© Morin (d. 1657â8) was the elder of two brothers, who were Parisian nurserymen, specialising in bulbs, particularly tulips. He produced a catalogue of his plants in 1621, in which is listed Geranium Indicum nocto odorato. Many of the bulbs he sold were from Holland, and the Dutch were the principal traders round the Cape to the East Indies. Therefore, the pelargonium probably found its way to Holland on a Dutch ship, and was then sent to Britain by Morin, possibly in mistake for a tulip or other bulb. If he had had the plant for over ten years he had probably distributed it to other collectors, if any others wanted a dried up specimen that was not a tulip and looked more like a carrot when it did produce foliage. It seems that someone who did was Jacques Cornut, another Frenchman, who described the plant in his Canadensium Plantarum, Historia, of 1635.9 He stated that it had come from Morin, who, he said, was a very honest man and had told him that it had come from India. This, therefore, was the corroborative evidence. Cornutâs description emphasises the night-scented properties of the plant, and he was the first to call it âGeranium tristeâ, meaning sad, dejected or gloomy. It would seem to be a description of the appearance of the plant, in particular its drab colour, rather than any inherent nature. Cornut does, however, dwell on the fact that the plant does not like the sun, but only responds to the moon, and he really does seem to be implying something about the feelings of the plant. This could be connected to the idea, prevalent at the time, that medicinal plants affect the balance of the âhumoursâ in the body and thereby control a personâs health.10 Cornut also provided âthe figureâ, so at least we can see what they were all talking about.
Five years later the sad geranium appeared in John Parkinsonâs herbal, Theatrum Plantarum or Theatre of Plants, subtitled âa herbal of large extentâ. There had been a race between Parkinson (1567â1650) and Johnson to see who could finish his book first. As Johnson had won, Parkinson had to show that his book had something extra, claiming that it was âshowing withal the many errors, differences and oversights of sundry authors that have formerly written of themâ. He lists the plants in seventeen classes, or tribes. In Tribe 5, Vulnerary or Wound Herbes, appears a group he describes as âCranesbills with Jagged Leavesâ which included what he calls âGeranium triste sine Indicum nocte olens, or Sweet Indian Cranesbillâ, and he thereby summarised all the names so far used for the plant by other herbalists. The illustration is clearly a simplified copy of Cornutâs, but at least he was able to come up with something. It may be doubted, however, that he actually saw the plant, because he simply gives a literal translation of Cornutâs Latin, with his own embellishments. It barely sounds like a real plant at all:
The roots of this Cranesbill are tuberous or Asphodil like, from whence rise foure or five long and large sad greene leaves, diversely cut into many parts, each part jagged on both sides somewhat resembling the leaves of filipendula but softer, the middle ribbe being reddish and the reste sad greene: the stalke is jointed or kneede with the like leaves rising with it, and at the toppe a tuft of many flowers, like for forme unto those of other Cranesbills, but of a box like yellow colour, each leafe having two purple spots on them, which being fallen there come such like long beakes as in the former with reddish seede on them, the flowers smell very sweete like Muske in the night onely, and not at all in the day time, as refusing the Sunnes influence, but delighteth in the Moones appearance; it tasteth somewhat sower, and both rootes and leaves are lettice for the Indians lippes.
Perhaps it was thought to be a vegetable after all, but how did he know what it tasted like? We can assume that if he did see it, he may have tasted it: apparently some years earlier he had cooked and eaten a tulip bulb to see what it was like.
The sad geranium continued to appear in plant lists and illustrated books during the next hundred years. It was in the seed list of William Lucas of The Strand in 1677 (called geranium noctu olens),11 and in 1678 an engraving of it appeared in Jacob Breyneâs Exoticarum Aliarumque Minus Cognitarum Plantarum Centuria Prima, published in Danzig. It was in the catalogue of the nurseryman George Ricketts in 1688 and was listed by Thomas Fairchild in 1722â3, but even by that time no other tuberous pelargoniums appear to have joined it. The sad geranium continued as a curiosity in splendid isolation. Unfortunately, the fact that it is so well known as the first pelargonium to appear in Europe has led some writers to imply that it was a direct, near ancestor of our modern plants. This is far from the truth. Its geophytic nature...
